Resilience: More Than Positivity
My body is demanding my attention while I recover from yet another surgery. I often have conflicting emotions about my body because of my chronic illnesses, but times like this push me to assess my relationship with the physical part of myself. On the one hand, I’m angry, frustrated, and sad that, again, my body limits how I live my life. My ability to get around will be very limited for a couple of months, and I am dealing with postoperative pain. On the other hand, I feel relief. My body is my home and the portal through which all outside experiences enter. While the surgery won’t cure me, it will allow me to experience more of life. Instinctively, I try to protect myself from negative feelings and push them aside. But I’m quickly reminded that they can escape quarantine at any moment and invade my psyche and body. Instead, I wade into the negative emotions and let them wash over me. I don’t run from them because I know I can’t run fast enough or far enough to escape. Paying attention to these emotions somehow loosens their grip on me, allowing me to acknowledge my pain and see a way forward. I quit waging war against my body and stop vying for a particular result. I honor my progress and take life as it is. I don’t think my disease was sent to me by some mystical force to teach me something, but I do believe it offers lessons. I welcome the openness and vulnerability that living with chronic illness has cultivated in me. I’ve learned that resilience isn’t something you arrive at; it’s a cyclical healing process that must be entered into again and again.
Time, place, circumstances, relationships, and personality shape our reactions. Suffering is a prism that exposes the colors that make up the white light that is us. All experiences make us who we are. Each of our lives is filled with contradictions, and it is in those contradictions that we learn resilience and acceptance. Looking back on our experiences and wondering how they changed us illuminates the spiral nature of growth and makes the lessons more meaningful. When we realize that it’s not just a single circumstance that defines our lives, we can stop reaching for specific outcomes and agonizing over difficult circumstances.
Nature shows us that we live in a world of opposites and that one counterpart cannot exist without the other. The universe provides life-sustaining essentials yet unleashes life-altering destruction. Several years ago, a spring rain turned the shallow, calm scenic river behind my house into raging flood waters that ruined the bottom floor of my home. I mourned the loss of precious mementos, but we repaired the damage and hold dear the memory of what was lost. I live in a place where summer days are filled with swimming, boating, and naps but are sometimes so hot that it feels as if the Earth has slipped out of its orbit and drifted too close to the sun. Several times during my life, the warm moist air and Gulf waters conspired to form destructive hurricanes. These storms evoked in me a knowing that impermanence is undeniable, and control is imaginary. Visitors and faraway observers sometimes mistake our choice to live in a beautifully precarious place as apathy, but I see resilience. It is the vengeance with which the elements can wipe the slate clean that summons the resolve to suck the heads, dance at funerals, and come to the aid of strangers. We are unafraid to cry, start over, and embrace all that is our home.
Reflecting on relationships and encounters helps me understand that contradiction is part of being human. Authentic love is a willingness to embrace the whole of ourselves or someone else. Love is the cornerstone of resilience. For me, that foundation was laid in childhood. Every so often, a song, a smell, a meal, or a chance encounter with an old friend transports me back to my childhood home. The little yellow house on Oaklawn Drive was the cocoon that helped form my resilience. Our tiny home was often bursting with people, some invited and some unexpected. The image of my childhood home reconnects me to a part of myself that gets lost in the busyness of life and the pain of illness. I am brought to the threshold of the deepest part of myself, beyond ruminations that echo with fears of the future. As my unpredictable life unfolded, change and love were two constants. I’m reminded that relationships are about loving the whole person, faults and all. They are about forgiving and about starting over again and again. The house where my baby sister came home from the hospital, where I got dressed for my wedding, and where my dad took his last breath has changed over the years. After I left home, my parents added some rooms and painted it blue, but like me, the essence of our home remains the same. Take time to wonder about your essence and what made you. Recognize that your life experiences have taught you how to be resilient. Be willing to chart a new course as circumstances change and develop empathy for yourself and others.
